"Newt Gingrich has read it," writes Dave Weigel. "So has Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. And so has Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), the head of the Senate Republican Policy Committee; according to his spokesman, the senator has also circulated the book among his colleagues." Giuliani emerges as a reader, too, as do Jon Kyl and Mike Pence. The "it" is The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes' shoddy work of New Deal revisionism.There is, of course, nothing more powerful than an idea that is suddenly convenient, and for Republicans, Shlaes is certainly convenient. She argues that the New Deal made the Depression worse, that it prolonged unemployment and stifled recovery. This is, as Eric Rauchway says, a sort of weird argument. "Except in the 1937-38 recession, unemployment fell every year of the New Deal. Also, real GDP grew at an annual rate of around 9 percent during Roosevelt's first term and, after the 1937-38 dip, around 11 percent." But Shlaes manages the trick by, well, not using those statistics. Ever. Instead of GDP, she watches the Dow. And instead of the standard measures of unemployment, she uses a creative measure that doesn't count jobs created by government relief programs. It's a bit like proving the failure of the stimulus by using a measure of GDP derived by subtracting stimulus money, and stimulus-driven growth, from the total.So it goes. In politics, it's more important for an idea to be useful than right. But I'd feel a lot better if I thought Congressional Republicans were cynically using Shlaes to lie to us rather than reading it in order to lie to themselves. Dishonest messaging is one thing. But a theory of governance which amounts to the deceived leading the dumb is rather another. ARE REPUBLICANS LYING TO THEMSELVES?
"Newt Gingrich has read it," writes Dave Weigel. "So has Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. And so has Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), the head of the Senate Republican Policy Committee; according to his spokesman, the senator has also circulated the book among his colleagues." Giuliani emerges as a reader, too, as do Jon Kyl and Mike Pence. The "it" is The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes' shoddy work of New Deal revisionism.There is, of course, nothing more powerful than an idea that is suddenly convenient, and for Republicans, Shlaes is certainly convenient. She argues that the New Deal made the Depression worse, that it prolonged unemployment and stifled recovery. This is, as Eric Rauchway says, a sort of weird argument. "Except in the 1937-38 recession, unemployment fell every year of the New Deal. Also, real GDP grew at an annual rate of around 9 percent during Roosevelt's first term and, after the 1937-38 dip, around 11 percent." But Shlaes manages the trick by, well, not using those statistics. Ever. Instead of GDP, she watches the Dow. And instead of the standard measures of unemployment, she uses a creative measure that doesn't count jobs created by government relief programs. It's a bit like proving the failure of the stimulus by using a measure of GDP derived by subtracting stimulus money, and stimulus-driven growth, from the total.So it goes. In politics, it's more important for an idea to be useful than right. But I'd feel a lot better if I thought Congressional Republicans were cynically using Shlaes to lie to us rather than reading it in order to lie to themselves. Dishonest messaging is one thing. But a theory of governance which amounts to the deceived leading the dumb is rather another. 
